Guess I should update, for those whose lives come to a screeching halt when I don't

The photo above was taken with my new Sony A350, which I bought the day after I bounced my Canon S3IS down the side of the mountain where I shot the above photo. I initially thought the canon had miraculously survived the incident, but as I discovered when I attempted to photograph a couple of whitetail does I came across at the quabbin reservoir, it can no longer focus beyone 20 feet or so. Which is a colossal bummer actually, I shot a lot of pics with that canon and I like the camera despite the limitations of its small sensor.

I'm still getting the feel for how to use my new sony. Its buttons are in different places and the various functions are in different places in different menus compared to canon and my brain is stilltrying to use the canon button-press pattern. I'm going to have to pick up a set of macro extension tubes or a good macro lens to get going with the macro photography that I like. This new camera wants to be the one that finally works the way I've wanted a closeup camera to work. I was vexed after I had already bought it and found that it did not have a mirror lockup like the A100 has, and I assumed it too would have, but it has a damped mirror and Image stabilization, so I put it in some awkward situations such as would have made my old 35mm slr cameras shake a lot from the mirror slap and it did just fine.

A couple summers ago I was fishing on the Connecticut river in Holyoke and I started wondering if all I was ever going to do with my life was fish the same rivers over and over again. That's when I started up first seeing if I could get into being a latin teacher and then took up the truck driving.

A long time ago something my dad said to me that I took too much to heart and gave me an unhealthful narrow perspective on things, was that if you don't work your brain you're going to work your back. If you're a bright kid with ADD and can't really perform academically the way you're expected to this is idea will tend to give you a rather bleak outlook on life, and to tell the truth it is still very much my outlook, though I can see how wrong it is. It's a false dichotomy. For some people, like me, it is necessary to work both body and mind to be fully themselves. I like making things. I know I'm good at pottery and I expect I would be comparably good at blacksmithing or glass blowing. I don't know exactly how to get from here to there though. But as i said before there is the example of Josh Simpson who started out living on indian land in a tent next to his glass heating furnace, and is now a millionaire, so there's no denying that where there's a will there's a way. I guess for me finding the will and way is a problem, given how deeply negative I am. A lazy bastard as well I suppose.

A random aside, It has struck me as odd that I am not cool, when I can discern that various other people are cool. If I can recognize what cool is, why am I not cool, myself? What is the defining difference between a cool and an uncool person? I've noticed that cool people don't do things specifically to be cool, they do stupid things becasue they're funny. Also, they refuse to stand up to their necks in shit just because everyone else is doing so. I think the latter observable difference is very telling. Most people find security in standing up to their necks in the exact same shit that everone else is standing in. For the sake of feeling safe and secure and connected, they deny that the shit is in fact shit. Cool people on the other hand, are like "hey this shit is SHIT! and hell if I'm going to stand in it". They have a greater sense of personal security and independence. They don't need to be up to their necks in shit, to be psychologically supported or propped up, you might say. They have a greater degree of honesty and clarity of vision because they are not in their hearts deeply commited to the denial of shit being shit they way eveyone else is, who depends on that shit, for psycholgical support.

Shit is shit, I tell you, or I don't, because I'm not cool and I need your shit to make me feel safe.

I should go out and take some pictures. I might even fish a bit, though I've been reflecting on how working and fishing gets you nowhere. Work is work, and fishing is play or escape from work. I think for an artist that work and play should be as one. Which may certainly be an oversimplification, but whatever.

Another random thought I had, was that you can choose to do anything you want with your life, but that whatever you choose is going to be boring. I'm not sure just how true or how pessimistic that is, but it falls somewhere along that scale.

whatever.

qapla'